


Looking in, looking out

by WickedWonder



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:08:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedWonder/pseuds/WickedWonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're in the band.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking in, looking out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShfiftyFive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShfiftyFive/gifts).



_It all started back in 1993._  
 _”That was our first year in Feeny's class,” Cory Matthews recalls. "I'd known him for years, he's our next door neighbor, but his being our teacher really jumpstarted this whole thing.”_  
 _'This whole thing' happens to be Mesa Verde, the band that Cory, his brother Eric, best friend Shawn Hunter and wife Topanga Matthews-Lawrence started while still in high school. Their newest album, “New Horizons” just came out, and we had a chance to talk to them before their two concerts this weekend. (Tickets are still available- go to our website for details!)_  
 _All of them agree that their music theory class paved the way for their success. “I was used to music being an instinctive thing,” Cory says, “and once I had the knowledge of how to write, it was clear that this was how I was going to spend my life.”_

Cory think he misses his house the most.  
He know it's stupid, but he and Topanga haven't bothered to set up a permanent place to live yet, and most of their individual crap is still in storage, so when he thinks of home, it's always the place he grew up, with his little twin bed and Feeny next door, in their little neighborhood. He's smart enough not to share this with Topanga, because he should be longing for a place of their own, but it's always in the back of his head.  
Part of it is there's not really people to be homesick for. His wife, brother and best friend are with him almost constantly to the point where they have a code word to signal when one of them needs some space, some alone time.  
One time, someone mentioned the Phillies, and he had to stop for a minute, because it all came rushing over him, and he missed home so acutely right then and then it turned a line and he could see the notes forming. He'd stopped the interview cold and grabbed for his staff notebook and as he drew the treble clef, the melody was repeating insistently. He'd grabbed Shawn and they'd had two verses written before even remembering the reporter in the room.  
It's weird how in his head, memories are always set to music. As far back as he can remember, there was always some form of score, lullabies fading into the radio mixed with lessons that turned into jam sessions until he looked up and realized that there was nothing he wanted to do more with his life than make music. So he did, and does.

_Shawn agrees. “I did my share of complaining about how rigid I found structure, and I'm the most disorganized person I know, but having the basics helps Cory and I coordinate.”_  
 _Something is obviously working- Cory and Shawn share credit on all fourteen of their albums' tracks._

He finds himself writing in the oddest places.  
Shawn always makes fun of Cory for carrying around a staff notebook, but at least he's prepared. Shawn has written on napkins so often that he has a kind he prefers. Over the years, he's gotten all manner of blank books and journals from Topanga, who apparently sees as her calling to get him organized, but after dutifully carrying them for a while he manages to lose them.  
He can't even recall when the words that were always in his head started resolving themselves into lines of poetry and then lyrics, but he's pretty sure it happened when Cory had found one of his discarded things he'd done for a class and woven a melody around it. They had spent entire weekends playing in Cory's garage, tweaking, and when an actual song had emerged, they'd made Topanga come over and then it became a thing.  
There had been a lot of hard work, true, but Shawn realizes that the saying 'the right place at the right time' was a cliché for a reason.

_“It's almost scary to watch them work together,” Topanga observes. “Once they get to where they're finishing each others' sentences, I usually head to my kit.” She twirls her sticks for emphasis. “I get it, though, There are definitely nights that I wake myself up with my hands twitching from playing in my dreams.”_

It sucks being the girl on the road.  
It gets her more attention (and she hates attention, especially the way it's offered), interviews usually ask her more about her costume changes than the music that she's actually playing, and she gets compared to Gwen Stefani.  
This makes Topanga the maddest. She has nothing against Gwen, they've never met and she seems nice enough. But Gwen is the singer. She's the front in her group.  
Topanga is the drummer. It's what she does. She never sings (she supposes she could, but the idea holds no appeal) and she stays right the hell behind her drum kit the entire set. On the road, she'll catch herself drumming her fingers against the window, quick little paradiddles and triples and she forces herself to stop. She's aware that it's annoying, even if it never bothers her.  
She thinks sometimes that her and Cory ended up the way they did because he treated had treated her as a drummer instead of a phase, like her parents at first, or posing, like some of their classmates had. They'd talk in Mr Feeny's class about songs, both popular and non- they both liked oldies- and when Cory had started composing, they'd spent hours playing what he wrote. By the time they'd gotten serious, they talked in shorthand.  
She wonders sometimes if a more normal life would've ever held appeal for her. She doubts it because hearing from friends and family about things like mortgages and raising kids makes her feel a little pukey. She does find the idea of a job that has set hours oddly appealing, but there's no choice between what she's doing now and what she could do. Her whole identity is tied up in her playing, and Topanga wouldn't have it any other way. 

_“I don't know where I see us in five years,” Eric muses. “I hope it's still this, doing what we love, and making people happy while we're at it.”_

It makes him mad sometimes to be 'only' the singer.  
The others get together, and have jam sessions, free-flowing nights of endless sound until the notes fly around his head and he can almost grab them. Then Cory will stop and dive for his staffbook and rip out a page for Shawn and Topanga will absently bang out rolls because her hands are never still and Eric, well, he just sits there.  
Sometimes snatches of lyrics will weave themselves into his head and he'll be totally excited and about to find paper when he realizes that of course, the lyrics are to an existing song.  
It's weird, being in a musical family where everyone plays an instrument and everyone thinks in notes- Topanga's dad made Cory his first guitar, for god's sake- and not being fully one of them. Eric can read music, he was in Feeny's class too, but while everyone was busy practicing, he'd be reading a magazine or working on other assignments. He still has somewhat bitter memories of recitals where all of his friends got praise for their songs and playing and he got 'oh and Eric was good too' because singing is easy.  
(He does and doesn't agree with that. Singing might've come naturally to him, but there are years of voice training in his past and he's well aware of the difference it makes.)  
He thinks of himself as a musical actor. If everyone's okay with actors interpreting others' words, he doesn't get the stigma of him not being a part of the creative process.  
Granted, he doesn't feel the need to rant often, but when he does, he has outside sources. (He kinda feels bad for Cory sometimes, having brother/best friend/wife all tied into business.) Jason usually gets the music-related ones, because of their shared Feeny past, and Rachel, caring about music just as much as she cares about cars- not much- fields anything that he needs a kick in the butt for.  
When he's homesick, that's when he calls Jack. He hadn't known Jack well growing up. He'd only ever visited in the summer, mostly accompanying a scowling Shawn to Cory's house and sitting awkwardly in band rehearsals. Eric noticed him, of course, but back then he'd tried to prove his worth to the others by taking on as many tasks as possible and didn't have time for talk. It wasn't until they'd been big enough to have staff that he'd gotten the chance to know Jack.  
Their relationship is odd. Back when Eric and Jack had started out was when their gigs were starting to take them on the road, and the two of them had sworn to hold no strings or commitments. How that had turned into total dedication, Eric still isn't sure, but it's the one thing in life he doesn't question.  
Well, that, and the fact that stepping in front of that microphone is something so utterly right that he feels it to his bones, every time it happens. While he's performing, the audience and he feed off each other, and it feels like every triumph he's ever had, and he can't give that up until he's made to.

_All of them agree that they see this as a longterm thing. "I'm glad we found out early what makes this work for us," Cory says. "We're very lucky."_


End file.
